Graphic & Web design blog

How To Edit Photos in Photoshop For Beginners

Even if you
are not involved in design activities, from time to time there is a need to
edit the photo. You can ask someone you know, as clipping
path service, but anyway I would like to tell
you about some tips on editing pics.

5 examples where it is easier to turn to the
program than to go for help

Let’s say
you have pictures of your trip. The photos are not bad, but still raw:
somewhere the horizon is filled up, somewhere you need to tighten the contrast
or you want to generalize the color so that you can put it on Instagram or make
a beautiful album.

First, you
need to open the file in Photoshop and unlock the photo layer by clicking on
the “lock” next to the image on the “Layers” panel.

1.
The Horizon, Cropping, Perspective

By the
combination of keys “Ctrl / Cmd + t” we open the tool of
transformation and, keeping the key Shift (for the preservation of
proportions), we pull by a corner of a grid of a photo, cropping it to the
necessary size. Then release the mouse and the Shift key (in this order) and
when the cursor changes to a semicircular arrow, click and rotate the photo to
the desired level. As soon as we achieve the required result, press Enter.

To change
perspective or to align a collapsed building, hold down the Ctrl key in the
same transformation mode. Hold down the key and pull the corner of the
transforming grid until the horizontal or vertical alignment is achieved.
Remember to hold down the Shift in order to fix the direction of travel
accurately, if necessary.

2.
Contrast

To increase
contrast in the Layers window, select Levels. In the new Properties window move
the sliders left and right. The far left is responsible for the dark areas of
the image, the average for half-tones, and the far-right for the lights. By
making the light more active, we also influence the mid-tones. Therefore, in
order to avoid overlapping, the middle slider can be moved to the right by
darkening the halftones.

P.S. here
and in the following correction tools we use the non-destructive method of
influence, i.e. we do not change the image, but superimpose correction layers
on it, which settings can be changed at any time without affecting the original
image.

Obviously,
the sky and the building are contrasting in tone, and the architecture becomes
too dark when the sky is darkened. To fix this, you need to change the contrast
of each object separately. For this purpose, in the same way, we create a
second corrective layer Levels (levels) called it “Sky”, it will
affect only the sky.

We turn off
the second “eye” and set the desired contrast of the sky, without
paying attention to the architecture.

In our
case, we need to make the sky much darker, so the slider on the left
(responsible for the dark areas) shift to the right. We do the same with the
middle slider.

To separate
the zones of influence, click on the white window in the correction layer
“Sky”. This is a mask: when it
is selected, we are in the mask mode. Its task is to remove the effect of the
adjustment layer from certain places. To do this, we’ll paint the areas we
don’t need with a black brush. In our example, the architecture. The brush is
the B key.

By drawing
in masks, we can influence the contrast of individual areas.

3.
Brightness and Saturation

The easiest
way to add or remove saturation is to adjust Hue/Saturation. In the Layers
window, select the Hue/Saturation function and use the sliders to influence the
color. The first slider is responsible for color distribution in the picture.
By moving it, you can simultaneously charge all the colors in the image across
the entire color spectrum – from red to blue. So you can experiment with the
color, make the overall tone of the image darker or colder.

The second
slider changes saturation. Moving it, you can discolor the image or make it
brighter. The third one affects the general tone, the slider to the left
becomes darker, to the right – evenly lighter.

4.
Clarity

If the
image looks cloudy, you can add clarity. To do this, select the desired image
layer and in the upper menu bar in the Filter section find Smart sharpen. The
first two sliders allow you to set the force of the filter on the whole image.

Below are
advanced Shadow/Highlights settings to reduce the impact of the filter on light
and dark areas of the image. This method is destructive because it changes the
image itself and you cannot undo any adjustments.

5.
Coloring

The
popularity of one or another color scheme in the graphics depends on the
popular techniques of cinematography. The more a picture looks like a movie,
the more atmospheric and attractive it looks. In Photoshop there is a large
number of various filters, presets, which can be downloaded from the network.
There are so-called LUT – Color Lookup, they are used to process the video and
static images that professional photo editors
use too. LUT is a set
of correction layers with specified settings. Initially, there can be any
number of correction layers, some of which affect the light, others – the
colors, for example, painting blue in a green hue, and warm red change to cold.
Using LUT for similar photos, we can set a specific atmospheric vector through
color and tone.

The
installation of such additions usually does not cause problems and has a
similar scenario. In the directory where Photoshop is installed, you need to
find a folder with the native presets of the program and copy there the
downloaded LUTs. After starting Photoshop the list of presets will increase.

However, do
not abuse the number of additional presets, as it significantly reduces the
speed of downloading the program.

So, we
decided to use one LUT for all photos.

After
application, a correction layer appears, and the photo located on the lower
layer changes. If necessary, we can reduce the impact of the adjustment layer
by reducing the FILL value.

Thus, by
correcting each photo, we get a geometrically smooth, beautiful in color and
composition image. Now the photos have turned into a full-fledged series,
united by color. The processing of photos in Photoshop is
over.

About the Author

Mirko Humbert

Designer Daily is a place for designers to find inspiration, resources, and thoughts that will be useful to their daily work. It is maintained by Mirko Humbert, a Swiss graphic and web designer. More info.